Homeless Texan becomes YouTube star after filming what it’s like to live on street (VIDEO)

​Filmmakers from Austin, Texas are trying to raise money for a homeless man who is making waves after he recorded a seven-minute video about his day and uploaded it to YouTube.

The “Homeless Man Records His Daily Life” clip published on the
video-sharing site on Sunday offers a rare and intimate glimpse
into the routine happenings of Sandy Shook, a white-haired
homeless man who lives on the streets of the Lone Star State
capital.

Joseph Costello, an area filmmaker who provided the video camera
to Shook, previously recorded footage with the man and shared it
online. This time, the team is seeing a resounding response from
viewers who’ve been moved by Shook’s very revealing and real
self-narrated story.

Speaking to the camera during the clip, Shook explains that he
thinks of himself as far different from the stereotypes that
often stigmatize the homeless.

“I don’t really feel good,” Shook says. “I'm a
homeless guy, which puts me with alcoholics and the narcotics
users. And I have a degree in computer science. And I've never
been an alcoholic.”

Shook previously told an Austin Fox News affiliate on the heels of a previously
released Costello-directed clip that he landed on the streets and
stayed because of a struggle with depression.

“I grew up in the 70's in my high school years, early college
years, and homeless people were almost nonexistent and now
there's just so many. Now I'm one of them,” he added then.

Now in the latest upload, Shook explains that an alleged incident
with a religious group decades ago left him emotionally damaged.

“What happened was when I was 24 years old, I joined a
church. I was a very devout Christian at that time. And it was
one of those mind-control groups [where] nobody gets out until
you're completely crazy,” he claims.

Costello, who considers his latest video with Shook to be
“very real” and “emotional,” says the support
he’s seen on YouTube in the recent days prompted him to launch a
crowdfunding site that he hopes will help Shook get the money to
return to his home state of Michigan where he’d move in with
family members and begin searching for employment. By Wednesday,
the video has been watched on YouTube more than 131,000 times.

The most recent edition of the Annual Homeless
Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress, a product of the United
States Department of Housing and Urban Development, determined
that around 610,000 people were sleeping on the street during any
given night in January 2013. This week, the National Center on
Family Homelessness said a more recent report suggests that
2.5 million children were homeless in 2013.